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Thank you Deborah. Your feedback is always helpful 🙂. Yes, I think I’m going to redraw this one (and maybe just keep drawing it until I get it right). I really like this pose. It reminds me of the Greek work called “The Dying Gaul.” I think a couple things went wrong with this one. First, I was a little preoccupied with trying to fit the whole figure on the page. At least that was a success🙂. The second is I overworked it and kept changing the shapes as I started focusing on light and shadows. I think my initial drawing looked a bit better than how it turned out with this one. Good advice about breaking it down and focusing on individual parts. I think I’ll do that with this figure. I’m also rewatching the Vilppu lessons about the gesture and the cylinder and box forms again because I need to really get it down. I just have to keep reminding myself to stop making the same mistakes after I know better.
Day 21. Still working on the drawing phase on this pose before I use pastels. Still trying to figure out some elements, and I need to do the details. This is all for today because it is too hot on my patio to continue.
Thanks Deborah. I think you are right. I’ll make sure I adjust before doing the details 🙂
Day 22. Worked on a study of the head of my reclining figure. Still need to work the proportions a bit more. I find this head position challenging.
Hi Bryan,
The NMA website kept giving me error messages today, so I couldn’t get on. The dramatic lighting and clear light and shadow shapes are working. I can’t tell whether it’s a dark photo or dark paper, but some contrast between the figure and background would help it to read. My goodness you’re doing a gutsy challenge! I’m finding it it challenging enough just to focus on the figure, linework and a bit of shading! To throw in colour theory and a new medium…I applaud you!
Thank you Deborah. This is on black sketchbook paper. I’ve figured out the dramatic light a bit. Now I just need to figure out more subtle lighting situations. The shoulders went a little too dark on the light side. The colors kind of do their own thing sometimes after I apply them. It does look better in person. The iPad camera doesn’t capture it too well. I see your point about the separation of the figure from the background. I’ll just have to figure out how to do that 🙂. There is also something a little off about the anatomy with the eye placement I think, but it’s hard to fix it without completely redrawing. I didn’t quite realize what I was getting myself in to when I started this challenge , but now that I’m here, I’m just trying to do the best I can each day and not be too hard on myself when I make a bunch of rookie mistakes 🙂
Day 23. Struggling with the drawing of the details of the figure. I felt like I had a game plan going into this, but I got thrown off and had to make a bunch of adjustments, especially on the face. The position of the figure is pretty difficult. This is where I’ll stop for today and look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow.
Day 24. Working on coloring in my figure. This is where I’ll stop for today because I started making a bunch of errors. Maybe I can do a better job on the rest of it later. Having a hard time picking the right colors. Trying for that Cézanne style.
Day 25. Still having trouble with color theory and how to apply it to oil pastels. Too much color saturation.
Hi Bryan,
I like that you’re working in color and pastels while focusing on drawing principles. What I would do here, in the last image you posted is try to use the whole page, and also work in a bit of the background at the same time as the colors and tones on the figure. I really like the way you’re treating the shadows on the torso and arms, but I think a similar treatment would work well on the legs. Ignore reflected lights most of the time, and add them only after all of the shadows are blocked in relatively flat. I do think that it’d be good to find shadows on the ground too. The feet should probably be larger and don’t forget the cranium, it’s currently a little small. The other thing to do is to try to get the lights a little more varied.
Keep up the good work and keep posting. It’s looking great!
Iliya
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